Michel D'Oultremont : More than a Photograph

The following video, and Michel D'Oultremont's works, are breathtaking. But, hidden in his words and disguised by the beauty of the film, is something bigger, something beyond photography, that I can't quite pin down. It's there, gnawing, scratching, and unrelenting, like a thorn, buried in the flesh, that won't go away.

I've watched it several times, till, finally, I watched it with my eyes closed, substituting people in for animals. Then, some truths for life come into focus (see what I did there? Clever!).

Truths like:

"I tried to put more distance between me and the {people}, to have more breathing space in the image, to have something more constructed . . . I tried to put more importance on the environment or the play of light, rather than the {person themselves}."

"Patience is one of the most important things to have. Without patience it's not possible to see {people}" because, "When challenges accumulate, they shouldn't hold you back, they should be an extra motivation. Because the next day, everything might change." But only if we're patient, and if we're there. 

"I think this kind of project is really important for our future, for all of us really." 

Perhaps the most important of it's kind.

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Corey Arnold : ALEUTIAN DREAMS

Corey Arnold can take pictures. 

"Fifteen years ago," he writes on his info page, "I wrote a job-wanted sign and hung it outside of a bathroom near Seattle’s Fisherman’s Terminal. It read: “Experienced deckhand looking for work on a commercial crab or halibut fishing boat in Alaska --- hard worker --- does not get seasick” I was 24 years old, energetic and ambitious, with a few years of salmon fishing experience but naive to the world of high seas fish-work. After a few shifty respondents, I was hired by a seasoned Norwegian fisherman and flew on a small prop plane past the icy volcanos and windswept passes of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, eventually slamming down onto the short runway in Dutch Harbor. The experience would forever change the direction of my life and shape my identity as both a fisherman and photographer. Isolated from the mainland by some of the world's roughest waters, Dutch Harbor is a thriving, working-class commercial fishing port surrounded by steep mountains and lonely windswept valleys. It’s a place where industry and nature collide in strange and beautiful ways, a place where people harvest seafood on a massive scale, and share their meals and their refuse with local wildlife --- from rapacious bald eagles to curious foxes. That first year I worked jigging for Codfish in the Bering Sea and continued to return for work as a crabber for the next seven seasons. What lured me back though wasn’t only the money, but the curious and often masochistic realization of the American dream happening in the Aleutian Islands. Those who come here often possess a desire to escape the safety of home to work in an environment filled with risk and visual grandeur that is far from ordinary. In recent trips, I joined fisherman at sea aboard crabbers and trawlers, and on land documenting the surreal landscape of fishing culture that once captured my imagination as a young greenhorn. Aleutian Dreams is a collection of images from my journey through this wild and unforgiving frontier of Western Alaska.

You can follow his blog here, or see more of his work here. Some of his works include exploring modern man's complicated relationship with animals, Great White Shark diving near Guadalupe Island, Mexico, and Chum Salmon season on the Yukon River in Alaska. And more.

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